I'll get to posting about Canada later. For now, just an entry about a random memory.
My parents were going out somewhere, such that they were semi-dressed up. My dad told my mom, "You smell." She looked at him; he seemed confused, then had a visible light bulb moment and added, "...nice."
Forrest and I are off to Canada. We don't know exactly what we're going to do once we get there... although, with the drinking age being less than Forrest's age, you might make a guess. ;)
My mom likes biscotti. I thought I didn't, but after trying Upper Crust Biscotti in SLO, I changed my mind. However, I still don't like to each a bunch at once; I prefer uniscotti
At work, there is an "Internz" internal mailing list — obstensibly for planning social events among the interns, but in reality much more like Usenet or some web forum, complete with massive off-topicness, flame wars, and invocations of Godwin's Law. One thread on the list, active just before Microsoft announced the official name of codename Longhorn (now Vista), was what interns thought marketing should name the new version of Windows. One intern suggested, very logically, that:
If we’re keeping in the tradition of windows XP, why not name it something like “Windows AC”, “Windows HP”, or “Windows THAC0”?
Well, I thought it was a good suggestion, anyway. Too bad Microsoft doesn't let the gamer community decide such things.
Coming to a History Channel TiVo broadcast near you in another 9 years: history of media, 2014.
Forrest and I were eating lunch off-campus today. Good teriyaki place. Anyway, I happened to look out the window, and staring at me from across the parking lot was the MSN Butterfly. Forrest hurriedly took a picture with his cameraphone before he flew biked away. I'll Photoshop the image later, but quality-wise, it's up there with Sasquatch footage. :(
Then, as we were getting in the car to leave, we saw the Butterfly again across the street, near a back entrance to a Microsoft building. We ran over there, but he had disappeared. We didn't know whether he had gone into the building or down the stairs into the parking lot. We gambled on the building and went in after him.
Alas, we didn't see him anywhere. We wandered around the outside of the building, thinking that since he was bike-bound, he might be cirling the building. No luck. We cut back through the building to get back to where we were parked, where we passed a couple local employees. One asked us what we were looking for (we must have looked pretty obvious *grin*). I told him we wanted to find the Butterfly. He kept walking down the hall, saying something about how he couldn't say anything. Very strange.
We eventually admitted defeat, thus ending our almost-brush with Butterfly.
I've been trying to get back to sleep since 7-something this morning. Damn lawn mower has been mowing all the grass in the complex, but I think he's been spending extra time and care on the lawn directly beneath my window. I finally got out of bed to shut the window, but it didn't really help with the noise much.
So I waited until 8, when the housing office opens. Our tenant handbook says quiet hours are supposed to last until 9 o'clock, so I asked them why, then, they hired their lawn mowers to do their thing consistently before that time. (They've annoyed me before, but I've generally tried my best to go back to sleep.) They told me, quite politely at least, that they would call the complex's office and ask them not to do that before 9 anymore.
I don't really know how business-run housing works, bureaucratically-speaking. Are they likely to ignore me? Will it increase my chances of them actually not doing this for a while if I call back today to "check on the status of my request"? *grumble*
Categories: apartment
Feeling sick again today, I got a taxi home after lunch. Since I had carpooled in with Forrest and Shane today, I stopped at Forrest's building to drop off my car keys, so they could drive themselves home at the end of the day. Of course, I forgot to remove my apartment keys from my keyring before handing the keys over. I only realized that I didn't have them when I got out of the taxi in front of my apartment. Bah!
I'm currently blogging from the office at my aparment complex's clubhouse, waiting for the office staff to return from their lunch. They're supposedly going to be back at 1:10, but I don't believe them, seeing how it's 1:20 now. I'll camp out on their couch until someone returns. Hopefully, they deal with lock-outs all the time and this won't be a big deal.
Update, 1:33 PM: All is well. The office gave me an extra key, so I blog to you from my apartment. Whew. Lying around sick on their couch didn't sound like a whole lot of fun; I'd much rather lie around sick on my bed here.
Categories: apartment
Growing up, I heard all sorts of amusing quips from my parents, and my dad especially. My dad's a funny guy in general, so I had always assumed these were originals of his. But throughout high school and college, where I met new people with more diverse knowledge of randomness, I discovered — to my shock and devastating disenchantment, let me tell you — that my dad stole his one-liners from all sorts of movies and songs and such.
Take, for example, the "group W bench." This, I always thought, was where a group ended up when you were resting mid- or end-adventure, and you were all sitting together at the same place. But no. No, no. It's much worse that than. The group W bench comes from Alice's Restaurant, where "mean and nasty and ugly and horrible crime-type guys" sit on the bench. Devastating, I tell you!
The phrase "with feeling!" may also be stolen from the same song, as they do use the phrase there, but I think that's a more common phrase and could be from anywhere, really. I am, however, deeply suspicious.
Steve Martin's stand-up is a favorite source of quotes for my dad: "wild and crazy guy," "well, excuuuuuse me," among others I can't recall at the moment. Squirts, care to help out via blog comments with what other phrases of Dad's you've stumbled across elsewhere? We must document such things for posterity, methinks.
And speaking of parental lies, don't even get me started on tree skirts.
Update, November 23, 2006: This Thanksgiving, Thing 1 and I lamented our disenchantment to my parents, aunts, and uncle. She said our parents should have a bibliography at the end of their lives, so we can know their sources. They said we should start taking notes ourselves. So! Squirts, parental units (another Phrase!), please comment on this post with phrases and their sources. :)
As Tim will tell you, I like personalizing things. So when I saw that the post office was restarting their customized stamps program again, I looked into it. It would be cool to have some novelty stamps — maybe my Arth logo or somesuch — but with a $10 pricetag above and beyond the cost of the stamps themselves, I won't be buying them. Anyone else interested?
Categories: DIY
John Cowan points out another interesting page, this one involving an ill-conceived ham purchase.
Also note people amusing themselves with haiku.
ROFLMAO. As Forrest can attest to, as I was giggling madly next to him on the couch will reading. Ahh, them crazy Chinese.
Categories: humor
Check out this nifty keyboard over here. I believe they say it's only a model, but if it really does cost "less than a good mobile phone," I may be interested.
This weekend should be fun. Friday, Tim flies in to Seattle for the weekend. Saturday, me, Forrest, Shane, and now Tim will be doing the Puzzle Safari. Sunday, us (probably minus Shane) will be attempting the summit of Mount Si, the big brother of Little Si that Forrest and I climbed two weeks ago. And then Tim goes back to SoCal, and I go back to work.
Woot! Tim gets the day off Saturday (they normally make him work 6-day weeks), so he booked a plane flight for Seattle tomorrow night! Woot woot. :D
Categories: Tim
Yesterday I attended the Server and Tools Business's All Hands meeting, which Microsoft's CEO Steve Ballmer spoke at. Before the meeting, they played a few funny video clips they had made. One parodied Star Wars, another all those house remodelling shows ("Server Room Makeover!"). Much coolness. After the meeting, we wandered around a giant room filled with Xboxen, basketball game things (almost certainly raided from various Microsoft break rooms), climbing walls, and a mechanical bull, along with the tons of free (as in beer) beer, pizza, garlic fries, candy, pretzels, soda, and popcorn.
From there, I went pretty much directly to Bill Gates' house for an intern party (he holds several of these barbeques in his lake-front backyard each year). More free food, and classier than the STB All Hands: salmon, chicken-on-a-stick, grilled veggies, salad, wine, and pie, among other things.
While I was sitting on the stairs eating my dinner, a friend happened to turn around and notice Bill walking down the stairs behind us. I ended up at the center of a crowd of interns asking Bill a bunch of questions. My dad should get a kick out of this: Bill Gates, very wealthy man as you know, Bob, was wearing shorts and mocassins to this hoedown/hootenanny. Bill seemed a surprisingly okay guy. House is a little on the ginormous side, but the grounds were beautifully vegetated and watery. He even has an indoor/outdoor pool that goes underneath an exterior wall of his house (and on the outside part, he has a flatscreen TV and embedded remote along the side of the pool; crazy!).
I didn't really chat with any of the other VPs present. I'm not very good at making random chitchat with people, especially when there are hierarchies involved. Not that Microsoft strongly enforces these hierarchies, mind, it's just a personal problem of mine. I blame it on my mother making me call all adults by "Mr." and "Mrs." when I was growing up. Yeah. Blame that. ;)
A rendition of "Guns, Germs, & Steel" is playing on PBS tonight; check your local listings for channels. I didn't get very far into the book, but it was interesting and excellent fodder for conculturing, conworlding, and world-building in general. Hope they do a good TV version of it...
Over on another blog, there is a posting about clothing size inflation — you know, where the "Large" pair of pants clearly wouldn't fit anyone not as thin as Kate Moss. I suppose it does have a point when it says that perhaps that is large for the general population targetted by Abercrombie & Fitch and the like. And sure, forcing all the women's clothing companies to agree to a standard small-medium-large scheme would never work. But why wouldn't some sane, sizes-with-units-like-inches, measuring scheme work, eh? Eh? Grrr. Need to go surf some other site before I rant off for another paragraph...
Hmm, that blog doesn't seem to be the source of happy news at the moment. It quotes The Wall Street Journal talking about taking a hit for the team.
And in more linkish news...
Oop, TV show on. Post over!
We made corn muffins a couple weeks ago, and all but the last one were eaten pretty quickly. Then, a couple days ago, I made another batch. Only three of the twelve have been eaten so far. What gives? Don't you guys like corn muffins anymore? Bah!
And now for something completely different: this morning's links.
Categories: links
Forrest isn't the only one to have career misgivings, I'm just quieter and less certain about them. This article got me thinking about such bigger-picture things again. Also reminds me of the book "Tales of a Female Nomad," which put me in a funky mood for a while after reading it. (As I'm sure Tim could tell you.) I'll go back to being quiet now...
Categories: career
Arrr! Today be the Intern Puzzle Day, a day o' dastardly puzzles t'be solved so's ye can find the treasure hidden on campus, all the while racin' against yer fellow interns' teams. From 10 'til 6, we toiled away, Googlin' arrr, I mean MSN-searchin' for trivia an' other useful information. We had ourselves a proper treasure map, X an' all, that we used to hunt down the treasure chest herself. Yarrr! Alas, our combo for the chest's locks be incorrect, and we failed to plunder it before time ran out.
If there be a next year here, this piratey wench be signin' up again!
Categories: links
New All Your Base goodness, aka the Zero Wing Rhapsody, brought to my attention by JMPP.
Categories: humor, AllYourBase, Flash
I would love to say I hiked Mount Si, really I would. But I hiked Little Si — that's the smaller peak just above the third foreground green tree from the right. Yeah.
Forrest and I went out hiking again this weekend. This time we went with a more ambitious trail than the meandering, level walk through the Redmond Watershed Preserve. East of Redmond is the city of North Bend, at the foot of Mount Si, a 4167-foot peak.
We didn't climb that mountain, though. Instead, we tackled the much less imposing and impressive Little Si, which tops out at 1576 feet. That may not seem like much, but let me tell you, when you're out of shape, it's a noticable climb, thankyouverymuch. I don't see any of you running marathons and the like.
We started up the trail at 2:30, relatively later compared to the rest of the hiker crowd that had turned out for the beautiful Sunday weather. Frankly, I might have preferred some cloud cover for the first steep section of the hike, but otherwise most of the trail was under the shade of second-growth forrest. We ate some of the blackberries and salmonberries growing along the trail. Mostly they weren't ripe, though.
Thankfully, the bulk of the Little Si trail is level and cool. We still took our time, and got passed by several hiking groups as a result. Near where the trail makes its final 300-400 feet of elevation gain for the summit, there are prayer flags and a bench dedicated to the memory of Doug Hansen, one of the Everest climbers who died in 1996. I have just recently finished reading Into Thin Air, so I recognized the name even before reading the rest of the plaque. Hansen apparently liked hiking in the Cascade mountains around here. Sometimes it really does feel like a small world.
Anyhow, we got up to the top at 4:30. There were quite a number of others there, scattered in the trees just below the rocky summit, eating lunch. The view from the summit was pretty impressive, so long as we didn't look behind us at the much taller Mount Si proper. ;) We couldn't see Mount Rainier for a ridge, but perhaps it's visible from Mount Si's summit. Strangely and somewhat annoyingly, highway 90 was still audible, even this high up. We ate lunch, rested for a bit, then headed back down. Down is much easier than up. :)
Forrest took some photos with his new cellphone; hopefully he'll post them soonish.
I'm blogging from work right now, so this'll be a short post. I created myself a new ringtone, one which amuses me far too much for my own good. Here, let me recreate its majesty for you:
.. -. -.-. --- -- .. -. --.
Yup. Morse code. Says "incoming." I smile every time my phone rings now. :P
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